Fragile Beauty

On the day of the Japanese earthquake, 3-11-11, we had a vase full of tulips sitting on top of the piano. A loud, rumbling truck idled in front of our house while waiting for the traffic light to change. The vibration knocked a petal off and the beauty and comparison of the fragility of life cut deep. I saw the world as a bouquet of countries and Japan just had a piece of itself die. 

In response to the quake I feel, "Watashi no kokoro wa zutazuta desu." My heart is broken or is in tatters. 

On the other hand, friends know just the right thing to do or say to make things better. God's Minion just sent this photo to us from the Bahamas. In case you can't read the sand writing it says, "Love you Cindia and Don." From one end of the globe to the other, love really does make the world go 'round. 

Japan

All day yesterday I be trippin’ down memory lane because on March 10th of 2009 Groom and I flew from the Left Coast of America over the International Date Line to arrive in Osaka, Japan on today’s date of March 11th. Many of you were reading the blog and might recall us sending brief entries whenever we had access to computers, which was a lot less than we thought considering where we were.

Since the memories are still fresh, Groom and I were tossing back “Do you remembers?” all day yesterday. This morning we woke up to the news that Japan is suffering massive earthquakes and tsunamis. My heart is breaking.

You see, part of the reason we went to Japan was for closure. I had to visit the grave of a dear, dear friend and say goodbye. Places and people to which I grew attached had gone missing in the devastating Kobe earthquake of 1995 and walking through familiar paths and seeing what survived and what had been demolished was tough and the reunions with folks still alive and accounted for brought such immense joy, but now to watch the “live reports” and videos of the current damage just sends shockwaves through my being.

So please join us in sending love, prayers and blessings of light to those experiencing this great upheaval first hand. Thank you.

Dainty Cuss

Oh happy happy joy joy, it’s officially Spring!

I can’t believe it. Exactly one year ago today, Groom and I were flying home from Japan, having spent two weeks retracing steps of an important journey I made years before. It was a dream come true to take Groom in hand and show him traces of my past.

In our modern culture, it is hip to express oneself through the art of tattoo, but mine are on the inside. I might have been born in the USA, but parts of me are definitely “Made in Japan.” That country has made indelible marks on me, and if I could peel back the layers, you’d see my interior embossed with cherry blossoms, the walls of my heart decorated with temple pagodas, the smell of aged wood and incense buried deep within.

A bittersweet moment was making the sojourn to one of my dearest friend’s grave. The Japanese have a single word to encompass the entire concept called Ohakamairi. It means to visit someone’s grave, to clean it, honor the person’s memory, light candles and incense, and pay one’s respects. Of course, it takes a string of English words to convey a similar meaning, but using one word or many, we made it to his temporal resting place on the 15th anniversary of his death.

I’ve thought of him every one of those days and I still miss him like crazy.

It was a calm spring day as we made the climb up the hill to his tombstone, the sun starting to show its muscle after a wintry rest. As we said our greetings, the wind suddenly kicked up, enough to catch a pile of leaves on fire from the incense ritual.

Interaction with the elements: Earth as in dust-to-dust. Water, I cried an ocean. Fire, spontaneous combustion. And Air. Something knew we were there and I found comfort that his reply arrived on the wind. When we finally said our goodbyes, the wind died down and it became hot and calm as before. Goosebumps.

It is now one year later, and the 16th anniversary of his leaving me behind (yes, I’ve taken his death quite personally), coincided with an especially bad moon-cycle. Aaargh, those nasty hormonal cocktails that the bartender in the sky uses to unleash March Madness.

So it was with prickly nerves that I made a little pre-production drama out of getting up to read my Oscar Wilde material at Poetry Night in Cottage Grove on Tuesday. The theme was “Irish/Green” and I took that directive quite seriously. I duded up in a Kelly-green wig and spent too much energy trying to memorize the whole thing, which served me not at all, because when I finally took the stage in front of the authentic 1970’s psychedelic lightshow, I just read the darmn thing and nobody knew the difference.

And had I only known. The poetry class from the University got wind of it and their professor was giving extra credit to anyone enrolled who would get up and read their original works. Well, first of all, only one other person bothered to dress up at all, and that would be Kimmmm, naturally. She designed a make you weak in the knees outfit that should have gotten air time at the Fashion Show, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

At 7 o’clock, as I was trying not to hyperventilate before my performance, I looked around at the crowd, or should I say, at the sea of flannel. The first poet of the night was a young girl, ever so casually dressed, who shlepped up to the front of the room, took her time ascending the mini-flight of stairs, and then made us wait (and wait) as she thumbed through her notebook, stopping every once in a while to mumble one of her scribbles. Completely monotone, none of us understood what she was saying. I don’t mean we didn’t “get her poetry,” I mean, it was just a jumble of microphone cack.

The second person dressed neither in green nor mentioned anything Irish. She read an uplifting tome about cancer and the burn of chemo. Great, ‘cause next it was me in my stripey stockings, steampunk goggles and giggles pertaining to Oscar Wilde’s emasculated tomb and then a limerick which went like this:

A limerick packs laughs anatomical
Into space that is quite economical.
But the good ones I've seen
So seldom are clean
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.

Then one of the extra-credit slam poets tossed off this line which I appreciated.

“No one can make you feel less,

Unless,

You have something to address.”

Oh boy, seems like I’m always having something to address…

Kimmmm, in her crazy wild outfit, did her impression of a recording of William Butler Yeats, and my favorite take-away phrase from the evening was “Dainty Cuss.” I think that’s a great description. I told Zolo, who also got up to read two of his originals, that he and I were dainty cusses.

As if one trip in a week to Cabbage Groove wasn’t enough, Groom and I returned Friday night to witness the 4th annual Paradise Fashion Show at Centro del Sol with Kimmmm. We sat front and center, believing our choice of seats would provide ample opportunity to capture couture shots just like real fashion paparazzi. Ha! As you can see, I’ve got a lot to learn.

The models walked the gray catwalk and climbed a few stairs to a higher level, took a spin, and then walked back down. I did my best to represent, but this is what my camera angle managed to reveal. And when I told a few folks what I did over the weekend, the common response was, “Fashion? Cottage Grove? Aren’t those words mutually incompatible?” Well, I’ll let you be the judge of that. (For Kimmmm's photo take on the evening, visit her Flickr page: www.flickr.com/photos/lampadina/ )

On a final note, several of you have asked what song I sang at Karaoke when I did my stretch goal. Ah, it was Shania Twain’s Still the One. I sang it to Groom and it’s a love song about a couple who have been together for a long time and lo, after all these years,

“You're still the one I run to

The one that I belong to

You're the one I want for life

You're still the one that I love
The only one I dream of
You're still the one I kiss good night”

Well, some might consider that a romantic gesture, which was my intention, but as I described, it came out more like a comedy bit.

Yesterday, a street guy begging change told me I dropped something. I stopped and looked back, just in case. He said, “You dropped your smile, don’t step on it.”

To recap, my week has been filled with Japanese memories, the color green, a bit O’ the Irish, hormonal angst, dramedy, comedy, the Vernal Equinox, dainty cusses and smile-stepping fashion.

Oh, and in case you forgot, you can always click on any photo to enlarge, then just hit the back button to return to the blog. Did you notice in photo #2, the one with the statues having their own fashion show, that somewhere hidden in the fabric, it says, "Made in Japan?"

Kampai!

Adaptation

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” is a question that has plagued me my entire life. When I was a wee lass, a niña chiquita, I had it worked out three ways. I was going to become an artist, a writer and an actress.

Before I could spell my name, I often scribbled on scraps of paper, line after wavy line of brilliant, imagined prose. As I didn’t have a paintbrush, I constructed my own from a clothespin and a playing card, making big, broad imaginary strokes of vibrant color on the wall. I played dress-up by the hours, my grandmother commenting that she’d never seen another little girl change clothes so many times in a day.

After graduating high school, I studied in Japan and decided I wanted to become an English teacher living abroad. I attended college in the States, earning a degree in English literature with the intent of returning to The Land of the Rising Sun, or as I call it because of the diet of gluton-y rice and gluttony of snacks, The Land of the Rising Belly.

That’s not what happened. I met Groom and started making jewelry while finishing my last term of college. Immediately after graduation, I was invited to share a booth at the Saturday Market and then we started doing Art Fairs and Festivals and now a skosh more than 18 years later, we’re still making jewelry.

One of the best gifts of 2009 was the realization that maybe designing jewelry was our thing.

Let me back up.

While in school, my career goal - the carrot dangling at the long end of the college stick – had been to return to Japan and resume the life I had made for myself. Groom’s career goal had been to become a teacher as well, that’s how we met. Through a series of events, including a ballot measure that eliminated the program, it did not happen.

Instead, we sort of fell into making jewelry.

Making jewelry did not fit into our plans. It was not what we studied or why we pulled the all-nighters to make the grade and switch the tassel. In other words, we never took it seriously; we were only creating jewelry until we discovered our true calling. Throughout the past 18 years, we have tried to quit. A woman offered to buy our business, and once we put everything into storage and took a year’s leave of absence.

In 2002, I got a wild hair and decided to juggle the Art Fairs and Festivals while attending beauty school for 18 months. After logging 2300 hours of what I acerbically call “community service,” I received my hair and aesthetician’s license. Nope. Turns out that was not my real thing either.

Groom has a sideline as a Site Inspector for construction loans and has also written a book called Why Doesn’t He Get It?, but while he certainly enjoys it, it’s not his real thing.

I wrote last week that for some, identity and clarity come easily. For us, it’s been an adventure, trying this, experimenting with that. While our journey unnerves some people (“When are you just going to pick one thing and settle down?”), it has inspired others.

I remember a woman I worked with at a hair salon. Realizing I was stinking miserable, I finally summoned the courage to give my notice (it was a pretty big deal at this point because I had already invested three years of my life and had $14,000 in school loans). She came up to me on my last day and said with tears in her eyes that she, too, was miserable and in physical pain. Because she was so successful and her family depended on her income, she felt trapped and could not quit. She expressed her admiration for me accepting that I didn’t love doing hair and getting out before it was too late.

In that moment, I did not know it really was too late for her. She died less than two weeks later, falling off the back of her husband’s motorcycle. That conversation haunts me. She felt too committed to her family and customers to follow her heart and yet they all must learn how to live without her income and mad hair skills anyway. Life is too short indeed.

So while some people would prefer that we pick a course and stay with it, we can live more at peace with ourselves knowing that we have taken risks and tried new things. (If you click on the photos, you can enlarge them to for better detail and then simply hit the back button to return to the blog. If you do this to the photo with the Paul Mitchell signage, see if you can spot me.)

Two years ago, a well known goldsmith who has been following our work, stopped by the booth to deliver a message. Born in Europe, she said in her beautiful accent, “You must take your jewelry to the next level. If you combined metalsmithing skills with your ideas, there’s no telling where you could go.”

Her cadent words stayed with me.

In the next couple months, we bumped up against a rude surprise. With the “economic downturn,” more people than ever are returning to the arts and crafts for potential income and this means greater competition in the Market Place. The category for jewelry is already deluged with applications for the few booth spots allocated in the show circuit, but add a few thousand more applicants and the competition to get INTO the shows has increased exponentially.

With the influx, rules in the industry are changing which only adds to the steep climb. Groom and I have been facing a moment in our evolution; we either quit the business or adapt and grow. We spent 2009 with this question snaking its way into everything. What shall we do? What’s our real thing? While reflecting (read questioning, railing, obsessing), we thought back on the ways in which money has most easily flowed: Writing and designing jewelry.

While going through the entire process of writing, editing, publishing and marketing Why Doesn’t He Get It? we both came to the realization that neither of us truly possesses the passion for the business of writing. Yes, I love creating this blog each week, but it is enough. My itch for combining and rearranging words is thoroughly scratched every seven days and it leaves me completely sated. I have no desire leftover to write anything else and that tells me a lot.

But we love creating things with our hands. If we quit our business, what else would we do? In what learning curve would we invest time, money and ourselves?

Uh-oh, I can see that I’m running out of room. Guess I’ll have to pick up that thread next week. Stay tuned…

Welcome To ZOLO

I wrote a New Year’s card to a friend recently and when he stopped by the booth he said, “So what’s Zolo?”

“Zolo? I dunno, what’s a Zolo?” I asked, thinking this was a lead-in to a joke.

“I have no idea, Kid, it’s something you wrote about in your note.”

We argued back and forth good-naturedly, me telling him that I had no idea what Zolo was, therefore I couldn’t have written about it and he insisting that he had the letter, and therefore the proof, at home.”

“Well, I guess you better go get it,” I teased him, knowing good and well I didn’t know nothing about no Zolo.

The next day, he reappeared looking a little sheepish. “Girl, I am so embarrassed to tell you this, but when I looked at your letter again I realized my mistake. I read your date of next year, 20l0 as zolo. Your 2 kinda looked like a ‘z’ and the1 a lower-case ‘l.’ I even showed it to my neighbor and asked her what it looked like to her and she told me ‘2010.’”

We both stood there at the booth laughing. After nearly a decade of living in the 21st century, a universal agreement has yet to be made about what to call the first years of the double aughts and yet just days before the new millennium turns 10, a handwriting blip and a pair of bi-focals provides a fun name for the impending New Year. ZOLO.

Christmas has come and gone and preparations are now underway for the big calendar change.

As the planet swiftly approaches another birthday, we decided to post some of our favorite photos taken in 2009. When we look at them, we are seeing them in their enlarged capacity, yet when you view them through this format, unless you click on each one, you will be seeing them in their miniature capacity. To return to the blog after you’ve taken a moment to enlarge, simply click on the back arrow and voila! here you are again.

For us personally, 2009 has been one of those interesting years that has grown on us. It was a difficult year to get to know at first, not nearly as open and friendly as 2008, but once I accepted that it was a new year and therefore a different personality, I began to accept it for who it was and it began to reveal its beauty.

Our biggest excitement for 2009 was traveling to Japan, finally investing in some real cameras, and making a decision about our jewelry, but that last part might be a better topic for next week.

There’s been some personal growth, some painful losses (I guess those two are not mutually exclusive) and some peaceful, perfect moments in between.

We invoke the possibility that we all have a lovely, healthy, prosperous and safe New Year.

Welcome to Z0L0!